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Saturday, 16 June 2012

I WAS A TEENAGE HORROR FAN

Book Two soon - Book One still available

During the 80′s I seemed to read nothing but horror fiction – it was a
boom time for the genre. In the US Stephen King was outselling everyone
and over in the UK, James Herbert was topping the best-seller lists.
Direct to paperback horror novels were everywhere Guy N. Smith, Shaun
Hutson, Gary Brander, Graham Masterton.

It was a great time to be a horror reader – in the newsagents there were magazines like the excellent, Fear (and we have an interview with editor, John Gilbert here soon)
which as well as offering all the latest horror news also published
short fiction and encouraged its readers to try and become the new
Stephen King. Fear was an excellent magazine and back in the day I never
missed a issue, I bought its entire run. The magazine looked at horror
in an intelligent way and as well as the latest gore books it also
covered the classics such as Poe and Lovecraft. The magazine had a spin
off fiction magazine called Frighteners but the first issue had to be
pulled off the shelves because of a gory cover illustrating a Graham
Masterton story. The story Eric the Pie, has become infamous and many
claim it went a step too far and was responsible for the demise of the
magazine.

Those with a strong stomach can read the story as a PDF from
the author’s website HERE. Be warned the story is rather gruesome – it
comes from respected author Graham Masterton, author of The Manitou and
the author told an interviewer in 1996 that, ‘On reflection I think it
went too far.’
Having to pull the magazine after customer complaints dealt
publisher, Newsfield a massive blow. Frighteners would go to another two
issues and Fear vanished with issue no 33. There’s an interesting
article on the demise of Fear and the Frighteners story HERE.

The closure of Fear really pissed me off – I had a short story,
Cissy’s Heebie Jeebies lined up for the mag – I really wanted to get
some fiction in Fear. Ahh well, I eventually placed the story with small
press publication, Peeping Tom where it was well received. During this
period there was a vibrant small press with publications like Skeleton
Crew, Samhain and Peeping Tom keeping the torch burning for horror fans.
And there were still several newstand horror magazines, The Dark Side
and Shivers being the most well known, but for me none filled the void
left by the demise of Fear.

I wrote for several of the small press magazines as well as
interviewing writer, Peter James and being delighted when I managed to
sell the piece to the well respected and long running, (still running)
Interzone. My own horror novel, entitled Misty remains however in the
loft, unloved and unpublished. And to be honest unpublishable.

Horror books though, for the moment, remained numerous in the shops –
there were all manner of creature on the prowl. James Herbert may have
started it with The Rats but since then we had Slugs, Crabs, Cats,
Locusts,bats, snakes and more than the odd slime beast. There were
vampires, ghouls and werewolves running wild.

There were some great new talents being published around that period,
some who have lasted, some who have not – Steve Harris scored high with
a string of chillers starting with Adventureland, Mark Morris wowed us
all with his novel Toady and these days writes, among other things, Dr
Who novels for the BBC, Michael Slade (actually a team of American
lawyers) grossed us out with The Ghoul and Clive Barker burst onto the
scene with his innovative Books of Blood.

There was a period when the genre was getting unexpected critical
respect. Stephen King analyzed the genre in his Danse Macabre and
respected critic and writer, Douglas E. Winter put together the
excellent Prime Evil anthology.

New subgenres sprung up – Splatterpunk which was horror’s answer to
the Cyberpunk movement and didn’t really mean much – if a book was
overly gruesome it was labelled as Splatterpunk. Brian Lumley set about
successfully reinventing Lovecraft with his Necroscope books.

So what killed Horror – overkill. The market became saturated and not
only with books but slasher movies, each less inventive than the last.
The Jason’s, the Freddy’s and the Michael’s ruled the celluloid roost.
The Nightmare on Elm Street saga was particularly successful with Freddy
becoming something of a superstar and even getting his own spin off TV
series.

These days the horror genre is still there but like, the western, it
is in a state of recovery – Stephen King no longer writes out and out
horror, slasher movies generally go straight to DVD and horror is no
longer a certain thing in marketing terms. But have no doubt one day
horror will remove the stake from it’s festering heart and return to
once again torment the popular culture.

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GARY DOBBS/JACK MARTIN

Actor and novelist. As an actor I have appeared in Doctor Who, Torchwood, Gavin and Stacey, Moonmonkeys, Larkrise to Candleford, The Reverend, The Risen.
As a writer I write westerns for the Black Horse Western imprint using the name Jack Martin. Under my own name I am responsible for several novels including the popular Granny Smith series. And using the name Vincent Stark I have written some pretty disturbing stuff.

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